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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 107 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

The Government may argue that it has not yet actually committed the money to the construction of the John Dedman Parkway; but it is pretty obvious from what has been said by the Government and the consultants that the objective of the current study is to work out the timing and route for the eventual construction of the parkway. The Government has already commenced construction on the northern part of the parkway, which is the section of Gungahlin Drive from the Barton Highway to the Gungahlin Town Centre. The extension of this road to the south to form the John Dedman Parkway seems almost inevitable. But has the Government completed the study into future public transport options, as required by the JPC report? Absolutely not. It has not done that.

The previous Labor Government at least commenced the future public transport options study. Three stages of this study were completed before Labor lost office at the beginning of 1995. The first stage set the scope of future work. The second stage found that a rapid transport system could be viable, but that a dedicated busway system between the town centres might be more cost-effective than a light rail system. The third stage looked specifically at the viability of a light rail system. The results of this study were promising, and the Labor Government was set to commence a fourth stage, to look at detailed implementation, when it lost office. The Liberal Government then abandoned the whole process because it did not like light rail; but, as a result, we now have a total policy vacuum on a transport strategy for the ACT.

Another recommendation of the JPC was that the Commonwealth and Territory governments develop and implement measures to reduce the number of vehicles travelling between Gungahlin and Civic and other southern destinations. Such measures included providing bus services to the new Gungahlin suburbs as soon as they are built; limiting the level of employment growth in Civic; encouraging development and jobs in Gungahlin, Mitchell and Belconnen; implementing a detailed commuter cycleway strategy; and introducing measures to increase the number of passengers per vehicle and to spread peak traffic loads.

The Government's response to this recommendation, including that of the previous Labor Government, has been half-hearted at best, and at worst has been quite contradictory. For example, the ACT Government has made no commitment at all to establish its own government offices in the Gungahlin Town Centre and instead, very recently, built a new office building in Dickson for the Planning and Land Management Group. Both the ACT and Commonwealth governments have allowed the rapid development of office blocks in Barton in recent years. Also, we are still waiting for the completion of the cycleway connection from Gungahlin to North Canberra. Bus services to Gungahlin still do not match the provision of services to other parts of Canberra, although the services in other parts of Canberra are now meeting the Gungahlin services; so, there is a match there. I am saying that the services are being downgraded in other areas to match the Gungahlin services. What a shame!

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